Prospects for heavy neutral SUSY Higgs scalars in the hMSSM and natural SUSY at LHC upgrades

TL;DR

This paper assesses the potential to detect heavy neutral SUSY Higgs bosons at the LHC using advanced analysis techniques within the hMSSM and natural SUSY models, providing projections for current and future collider runs.

Contribution

It introduces a combined tau decay analysis method that enhances signal significance for heavy Higgs detection in SUSY models at the LHC.

Findings

Exclusion limits reach up to 1.4 TeV for m_A at high luminosity.

The combined analysis improves detection sensitivity over standard methods.

Projected discovery and exclusion ranges vary with LHC upgrade stages.

Abstract

We examine production and decay of heavy neutral SUSY Higgs bosons pp-> H,\ A -> \tau\bar{\tau} within the hMSSM and compare against a perhaps more plausible natural supersymmetry scenario dubbed m_h^{125}({\rm nat}) which allows for a natural explanation for m_{weak}\simeq m_{W,Z,h}\sim 100 GeV while maintaining m_h\simeq 125 GeV. We evaluate signal against various Standard Model backgrounds from \gamma ,Z ->\tau\bar{\tau}, t\bar{t} and vector boson pair production VV. We combine the transverse mass method for back-to-back (BtB) taus along with the ditau mass peak m_{\tau\tau} method for acollinear taus as our signal channels. This technique ultimately gives a boost to the signal significance over the standard technique of using just the BtB signal channel. We evaluate both the 95% CL exclusion and 5\sigma discovery reach in the m_A vs. \tan\beta plane for present LHC with 139 fb^{-1}, Run 3 with 300 fb^{-1} and high luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) with 3000 fb^{-1} of integrated luminosity. For \tan\beta =10, the exclusion limits range up to m_A\sim 1, 1.1 and 1.4 TeV, respectively. These may be compared to the range of m_A values gleaned from a statistical analysis of the string landscape wherein m_A can range up to ~8 TeV.